had, a little time before these events, asked the University for a
grant to build a well-lighted room for the undergraduates apart from the
obscure and inconvenient Ruskin school; his request was instantly refused
on the plea that the University was in debt, yet in the very next year
this debt encumbered seat of learning and courtesy voted 10,000 pounds
for the erection of a laboratory for the vivisector and 2,000 pounds more
towards fitting it up and maintaining it,--for troughs and gags and cages
and the rest of the horrible paraphernalia.

This must I should imagine be the most squalid page in the history of
modern Oxford.

More than thirty years have passed since that University thus publicly
preferred a dog smootherer to one of the noblest of teachers and
saintliest of men.

Both are now long departed. The one can no more block up the wind-pipes
of living dogs and watch their dying convulsions, and the other can no
longer lead the minds of youths and maidens to seek and find beauty in
the visible world about them and recognise in it the hand of God--but the
world has known which of these men led the youth of Oxford to look up and
which to look down, and to-day a merciful oblivion covers the names and
doings of this triumphant vivisector and his valiant supporters, while to
the farthest inch of the English-speaking realms the writings of Ruskin
are treasured in a million homes and his name acclaimed with grateful
reverence.

_NOTE_.--This chapter on Ruskin having appeared as an article in _The
Animals' Defender and Zoophilist_ in March, 1917, and a copy of it having
been sent to the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, the
following correspondence ensued:--

CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD,
_March_ 3_rd_, 1917.

DEAR SIR,--I thank you for sending me the copy of _The Zoophilist_.
May I point out that it is not customary for the Vice-Chancellor to
read to Convocation the letters of Professors who resign, or to print
the letters in the Gazette?

Yours very truly,
T. B. STRONG.

HON. STEPHEN COLERIDGE.

SOUTH WALES CIRCUIT,
ASSIZE COURT, CARDIFF,